Technicality
by Blue-with-purple-polka-dots
Summary: Mirage character study. One shot. The cost of looking back.


_Mirage. Sort of a character study. One shot_.

_(You know she's my favourite Incredibles character? I think she's more interesting than some people give her credit for.)_

_00oo00_

There would be many which eventually would ask her why she joined him as well as why she betrayed him. There would be many who would scorn her for her apparent 'standards' only being stretched when children had been thrown into the firing line. Many who questioned whether the turn around had simply come from her employer's complete lack of loyalty and concern for her.

In truth it had been a little of both which had caused her to make the decision. In a way however they were also both interlaced and connected.

It had also eventually, with a little time, made her realise her own past actions and what they meant.

It had been easier before she'd got closer to the intended victim. She never really had to deal much with the end result. Now alone with her former employer dead she had to face it and realise that not being the directly involved didn't negate her role or responsibility. Hating the dead was also exhausting, and while he was more at fault, she knew she had been at fault too. That was the cost of lifting mental blocks in general. The cost of true self awareness. Valuable, _necessary_ but nonetheless occasionally unpleasant.

People don't often realise that many such organisations like the one she worked for... _are_ in fact organised. They have a system. Some even operated much like regular companies. They had disciplinary checks, incentives, and in their case they _were_ an actual extended branch of a legitimate company. Syndrome had said they and everything which occurred on the island was part of the Advanced Research Development Department. Which _was_ technically true. They tested his weapons but simply kept the best for themselves. That was the part they left out.

They also kept silent about the various test subjects they had used. The heroes in question. Of course since you wanted to be _technical_ about it they had at times been referred to as gods in the past, angels in some cultures, yet demons in others, very rarely were they referred to as human, even if most of them were and all of them were people regardless. Technically.

Mirage hated technicalities now.

Not every member of a terrorist organisation is an executor. Some are secretaries. Some are researchers. Some simply work behind the scenes. It was just a job. Perhaps Mr Incredible's former employer had even been right. A company _is_ like a clock.

But almost all organisations, like clocks, have a face. And Mirage was that face.

Picking a woman for the job had been more or less a no brainer as far as Syndrome had been concerned.

Supers, simply humans in general, both male and female alike would tend to relax, be more open and let their guard down around one more often than with any man. To most men, she seemed to be no threat and could be a distraction in other ways even if they could only look. To most women they would be pleased to see another who was refined and of a certain prominent status within a part of the _'government'_.

She seemed to be so much this and more that so few decided to follow up on the claims that they _were_ in fact in the government at all. And those which did attempt any follow up, after seeing the merest scrap of truth however manufactured, would come to accept it all too easily. People saw and believed what they wanted all too well. And that was their first mistake.

Besides, they did have connections with parts of the US government. They wanted to keep certain types of respect too after all. No office (or person, come to that) is completely incorruptible.

Mirage wondered if the family knew that. But would they believe her?

When she looked back, it was the little details, the little aspects of human psychology her former employer knew, or at least, thought he knew, that made Syndrome really dangerous. Things which almost seemed like common sense when you thought about them or looked back with hindsight but you simply didn't focus on at the time. Perhaps he even knew how close to sociopathy he himself really was and simply didn't care. Since he was dead, and she only thought of this on hindsight a few years later, she'd never really know.

How did she deal with it at the time? Like a lot of people in those organisations, those who didn't kill victims themselves: she would simply not think about it. It was easy when you didn't have to clear up the actual mess. It was just a job. A literal one which went from 9 to 5. She even had paid vacations. It was almost too easy to convince yourself that was all it _really_ was. That the killing wasn't your responsibility or fault. Or even that such things were acceptable and even normal as time went on.

The most dangerous lies were the ones you told yourself. Your own self created delusions. You didn't think about the man or woman you didn't ever see again. You could convince yourself of the things you couldn't know for sure. That people could deserve something like that, even if their only real crime was extreme narcissism. That perhaps even that their cause was part of something bigger, or even...

She would have laughed at her past self now, though it wasn't funny at all. It was sometimes hard to get back into that mentality and how ridiculous she'd been. Because deep down she had always known. That small part of her that always knew that Syndrome's plans were unfair, stupid, amoral, _insane. _The part that she had ignored, repressed. That little voice she thought she'd smothered came back.

Children shouldn't have mattered after all and shouldn't have been what caused her first prick in her conscience in years. Everyone had once been a child, and everyone was a person. And she had helped kill people even if she'd never done so directly. For a job for a man who didn't value the life of anyone's but himself. That the man she'd got into that degrading position _spared_ her when anyone else would have possibly snapped her neck in his grief. Even she would not have blamed him for doing so in retrospect. Revenge is often ugly, but it's understandable.

The inner voice inside her had been muted for two years at the time, and it wasn't going to let it's moment at the forefront of her conscience to go to waste. Who knew when it would get a chance again? As it turned out, it would in reality be there for quite a while.

If Syndrome had been insane what did that make her? What did that make all of them?

Valuing life didn't make you weak. Disregarding it _wasn't _strength.

In truth, perhaps Mirage hadn't just been talking about Syndrome when she'd said that.

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End file.
